


i make sparks

by weatheredlaw



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Family Reunions, M/M, Mild Language, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 11:03:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18690193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: Things come and go so quickly, especially the most important ones.Andgodthis feels important.





	i make sparks

**Author's Note:**

> it's my boys i'm so glad everyone's on board with this ship now <3

What’s easy is the falling.

What’s hard is the way back up.

Donut lays in bed and breathes and remembers this. It is important, he thinks, that he always remember this.

The first week planetside is _hell._

The midwestern air is thick and heavy with spring time. Helmets filter things like dirt and pollen out, and so his eyes start to water and his lungs are laden down with the season. Wash says something _terrible_ like, “They removed my sinuses when I got into the program,” and the look on Donut’s face must strike fear in him, because he lifts his hands, tries to laugh it off. “I’m joking!” Donut is still dumbfounded because he knows for a fact the project did a lot of things to Wash that aren’t very funny at all.

Wash hooks his index finger in the gap between two of the buttons on Donut’s shirt and tugs him closer. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and Donut finally exhales, just as Wash catches his bottom lip between his own, eyes fluttering closed as they stand in the kitchen of their UNSC-gifted home that sits on UNSC-gifted land with a single UNSC-gifted cow.

Post-war America is a strange and unsettling place, but Donut knows he and Wash are strange, unsettling people.

So — they fit in just fine.

 

* * *

 

To fix the world, Wash needed to get shot.

To fix the world, Wash needed to lose blood.

To fix the world, Wash needed to lose vital amount of oxygen to his brain, but this time — Carolina doesn’t shoulder the burden on her own.

(She was there when they left and she held Wash and he held her back and she took his face in her hands and said, “You are my best friend,” and kissed his forehead and Wash cried like a baby. They both cried. Donut cried. Even Sarge cried.)

To fix each other, Wash needed to be forgiven, and the fix themselves, they needed to get this right. So when they are offered a chance to leave, to end it all, to say goodbye to armor and bases and perilous, _aching_ danger — Donut grabs Wash’s hand and begs him to go with him.

“I’m not your first choice.”

“Only because Caboose is going back to the moon.” Wash raises a brow. Donut sighs. “Doc wants to be an actual doctor. He’s staying on Chorus.”

“Tucker? Grif? Simmons?”

“Tucker’s going to find Junior. Grif and Simmons are...missing.”

Wash laughs. “Okay. _Okay._ Sarge?” he asks, probably just to be a little shit.

Donut smiles. “I invited him. He said if he wanted to spend the rest of his life being slowly crushed to death by the inevitable presence of his own mortality, he’d have moved home years ago.” Wash raises a brow. “He’s staying. And I’m not.” He pulls Wash closer. “Please come with me. I only asked you last because the idea of you saying yes...gives me anxiety. Well, most things give me anxiety, honestly. Like I’ve been hearing ships land and take off and I smell _jet fuel_ a lot and I keep thinking—”

Wash kisses him. His lips are kind of dry and he seems out of practice, but you couldn’t pay Donut to remember the last person he kissed, so he returns the gesture with as much enthusiasm as he can muster. It’s a little panicked, maybe. Things come and go so quickly, especially the most important ones. And _god_ this feels important. He swipes his tongue against Wash’s and puts a firm hand at his waist, pulling them together.

“I’ll go with you. I...could use the help,” Wash says.

Donut grins. “Oh, I’m down for that. Very down, if you catch my meaning.” Wash makes a face and Donut shrugs. “You wanted to ride this train, Agent. No refunds now.”

 

* * *

 

So they settle, strange and unsettling, on their land and in their house and Wash looks out across their very modest piece of acreage and says, “There’s no way in hell we are doing this.”

Donut grew up on a farm. Somewhere in this state, his mother is still _running_ a farm, he suspects. He looks at Wash and puts an arm around his shoulders. “Sure we are, big guy.” He takes Wash inside and shows him a calendar of when they’re supposed to plant things, when they’re supposed to harvest them, what’s predicted to sell best this year.

“Donut, I don’t think you understand how _not_ prepared I am for this.”

“You’re a former super marine! Farming is just...war, but easier. War with bugs, war with weeds, war with rotting vegetables—” He ticks them off and each item makes Wash look less and less comfortable. “Besides,” he says easily. “Dr. Grey said something monotonous would be kind of good for you. _Not_ ,” he adds, “that farming is anything monotonous. It’s hard work!”

Wash puts his face in his hands.

Donut sits across from him.

“Well,” he says. “That’s alright if you don’t want to. I mean, it’d _probably_ be too tough for you to handle anyway.”

Wash kind of stops breathing for a second. Donut wishes he wouldn’t do that, it freaks him out.

On a heavy exhale, Wash mutters, “I could farm.”

“You sure about that city boy?”

Wash lifts his head and points. “Stop fucking challenging me. I mean it.”

“Fifty bucks and the first shower after we clear this land tomorrow says you can’t hack it.”

Wash sticks out a hand. “ _Fine._ You’re on.”

 

* * *

 

By the end of the first day, Wash is almost falling asleep standing up, but Donut’s not much better. They’re collapsed in two chairs on the front porch, knees knocking together as Wash says, “You can get the first shower.”

“No, really, you can.”

“Nah, you won it fair and square.”

Donut yawns. “I actually think _you_ won it.”

Wash looks at him. “I used to be able to throw _cars_ at people. This is ridiculous.”

Donut laughs and reaches out with a limp arm and hand to grab at Wash’s fingers. “Well _that’s_ because you’re old now. And jeans don’t give you super strength.”

Wash nods, then makes a face. “God, is that smell _me?_ ”

“It’s both of us. Let’s just shower at the same time.”

Wash nods. “Good plan.”

 

* * *

 

Somewhere in the state of Iowa, their respective families are living their lives, and neither of them can admit it.

Donut’s last words to his mother had been very angry. They had fought about him joining the army, fought about him leaving the farm behind, and Donut is terrified to see her again. He is terrified for her to know what happened to him, and he stands in front of the bathroom mirror the morning they’re supposed to drive to see her, staring at the scar on his face and his brand new hearing-aid while Wash hums in the shower behind him.

“I can’t go,” he says, after the water’s been shut off.

Wash sticks his head out from behind the curtain and frowns. “You said I was allowed to manhandle you into the car. I said I didn’t want to, but don’t make me _manhandle you into the car_ , Donut.”

“Look, you can _manhandle_ me whenever and wherever you’d like—” Wash _scowls._ “—but I think maybe we need to call her and tell her I’m sick.”

“Freak out about it on the way there,” Wash says, and disappears behind the shower curtain again.

“You are supposed to love and support me no matter _what_ ,” Donut says.

“Donut, you’re seeing your mother.”

Donut huffs and stalks out of the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him. He could passive aggressively unpack his suitcase — but then he’d have to do it again. Alternatively, he could passive aggressively unpack _Wash’s_ suitcase, if only because he’s certain Wash has probably forgotten a few important things, checklist be damned. A cursory look says he’s missing his hairbrush, but they’d done this together, he should have a bit more faith —

“ _Keep your hands off the suitcases_ ,” Wash calls from the bathroom.

Donut stomps down the stairs, stomps to the car, and sits it in for twenty minutes with the windows down until Wash comes out with their bags, settles into the passenger seat, and kisses him.

“Come on,” he says. “You’re braver than this.”

And that’s how they wind up outside Donut’s mother’s house an hour and a half later, while Donut breathes and Wash rubs his back and talks softly into his ear. Donut presses his forehead to the steering wheel and _cries_. He grips Wash’s hand so tight in his he swears he hears Wash’s knuckles crack.

But Wash just sits beside him, pulling him in and kissing his temple.

“I love you,” he says. “Did I say it this week?”

“Once,” Donut manages.

“I’ll remember more.” He cards his fingers through Donut’s hair. “I promise.”

When they finally get out of the car, Donut’s calmed down. Wash helps him clean up, then gets their bags from the trunk while Donut takes a handful of steadying breaths, one hand braced against the car, the other planted solidly on his hip.

He’s _Donut._ He can _do this._ He saved people and traveled through time and lived and died and lived again and this is just seeing his mom. He can see his mom.

God, this place brings back memories. It’s a massive, fully functioning farm. Everything about this place is efficient, just like his mother. Everything about it is beautiful —

Just like his mother.

She steps out of the house and onto the wrap-around porch, arms folded over her chest. Donut had only emailed her, because the idea of hearing her voice for the first over the phone gave him _hives._ And now she’s standing there and she is every inch his mother, every ounce the woman he remembers.

Her expression is stern, but there’s a tremble in her left cheek, a tell only Donut ever really understood. He stands at the bottom of the steps leading up to the porch and swallows thickly.

“Hey, mom.”

In a second, their last words rush back.

_You can’t just keep me here._

_War is dangerous, Frank._

_Staying here is dangerous, you expect me to do that?_

_I expect you to be grateful._

God, Donut _is_ grateful.

“Mom, I—”

She steps down to him and pulls him close. “Don’t you say it, baby. Don’t even think it.”

“I’m _sorry_ —”

“Don’t. Not a word. You don’t owe me anything.” She pulls back and cups his cheek, touching the sensitive skin of his scar. “Frankie, what _happened?_ ”

Donut laughs. “Um. Not a spider,” he says. “That’s for sure.”

She laughs and kisses his cheek, holding him close again. “Do I want to know?”

“Well. Maybe not everything, but…” Donut takes her hands in his. “This is Wash,” he says. “We…” Donut looks over his shoulder and tries to think of the best way to put it. The best way to explain it. He looks back at his mother.

“We’ve been through a lot together.”

 

* * *

 

They spend three days working the farm, being fed to excess, and falling asleep at seven o’clock. Donut wakes up early the second morning and Wash is already up, being shown a handful of photo albums and force fed french toast.

“He seems a little forgetful,” Donut’s mother says gently one evening. “Is he okay?”

“He’s been through a lot,” Donut says, and kisses her temple.

“Where’s his family?”

“They live here, actually. We just haven’t met them yet.”

She laughs. “Makin’ the rounds, hm?”

“Little bit.”

She sighs and leans against his shoulder. “I’m glad to have you back. Don’t run off again, alright?”

Donut wraps an arm around her shoulders and nods, pressing his lips to the top of her head. “I won’t,” he says. “I promise.”

 

* * *

 

A week after they get back, Donut decides it’s time to meet Wash’s family.

“We met my mom. I wanna meet yours.”

Wash is kind of hunched over his plate, shoveling dinner into his mouth. They’re both exhausted, but the place is looking good and even though Donut didn’t really approve, Wash got onto the roof and fixed it himself today. He’d been pretty pleased with his work, but now he looks kind of miserable.

“Donut, it’s kind of complicated.”

“That’s okay.” He reaches over and puts his hand on Wash’s wrist. Wash is good at hiding his anxieties, good at smothering his fear. But his pulse beats fast against Donut’s fingers, and his breathing is sharp and measured. “These things can be fixed.”

“...I don’t know if this can.”

“Wash—”

“Can we talk about this tomorrow? I don’t…” He leans back and pushes his plate away. “I don’t really have the energy.”

“That’s okay,” Donut says. “You can go on to bed, if you want. I’ll clean up.”

Wash nods and heads up the stairs while Donut rinses the plates. He stands at the landing on the first floor, wondering if Wash needs to be alone, wondering if he should take a walk around the outside of the house, wondering if —

“Hey.”

Donut looks up and Wash is standing at the top of the stairs.

“Wash—”

“Just get up here,” he says, and goes back into their room.

Donut follows him, climbs into bed alongside him and is pulled in close. “Did I upset you?” he asks.

Wash shakes his head. “No.”

“Okay.” He feels Wash’s lips brush against his temple and he closes his eyes.

 

* * *

 

“When we joined the project, they told us we couldn’t have anything to go back to.” Wash sits on the steps of the front porch while Donut leans against him, their fingers threaded together. “Couldn’t take that risk.”

Donut leans away. “Did they _kill_ your _family?_ ”

“What? No!”

“Hey. I dealt with those lunatics. I would _not_ put it past them.”

Wash sighs. “No, Donut. They didn’t kill my family.” He scrubs a hand over his face.

And, now, Donut understands why it’s complicated.

“They killed you. They told your family you were dead.”

Wash nods. “Yeah. That’s what they told me, anyway.”

“But that’s...I mean that’s fine then. You show up, you’re not dead, and everyone is happy.” The look on Wash’s face is unpleasant. Donut sighs. “I guess…that would be hard, huh? Everyone thinking you’re gone and you just...you’re back.”

Wash looks at him. “I _want_ to see my family again. I want that more than anything, but I...what if it hurts, more than it helps? What if it makes things worse? I’m not the same.”

“Neither am I, but my mom understood. Everyone...everyone _can_ understand, Wash. I believe that.” He holds his hand tighter. “You aren’t going to know until you try. And if they can’t...then I’m still here. I love you,” he says. “And I’m still here.”

 

* * *

 

Wash’s family still lives in his old house. From down the street, Donut can see two people in the front yard, raking and trimming the bushes. An older couple from the looks of it, pretty typical midwestern suburbia. Wash is hyperventilating in the passenger seat. They’ve had to stop three times in the twenty minute ride here so he could be sick.

“We know they’re here,” Donut says. “That _is_ them, isn’t it?”

Wash glances up, watches the couple working, and nods. “Yeah. _Fuck_ ,” he mutters, and opens the door to retch again.

Donut sighs and rubs his back. “Nothin’ left, babe. Wanna go home?”

“No. _No._ I said I was going to do this. I’m doing it.”

“...It’s seeing your family, Wash. Not a mission. You don’t _fail_ at this, you just...come back later.”

“I can’t. If I turn around I won’t come back. I have to do this.”

Every so often, Wash stops being _Wash_ and Donut knows he’s with Agent Washington, the creature that climbed out of the viscous muck of his past and his training and a dozen implant surgeries. Less a man and more a _thing_ , a thing that does not give up and does not retreat.

The creature that _shot_ him.

Wash must realize what he’s doing, because he relaxes and, on the exhale, he’s _Wash_ again.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Donut reaches out and takes his hand. “Just...just know we can come back. I’ll manhandle _you_ into the car next time.”

Wash finally laughs for the first time all day. He lifts Donut’s hand and presses his lips to his knuckles. “Thank you.”

“Whatever you need. Understand? Whatever—” Wash suddenly opens the door and gets out, leaving Donut to scramble after him. “Wash! Wash, I thought you—”

“I’m doing this,” he says. “I’m here so I’m doing this.” He checks his reflection in the window before looking back at Donut. “Are you coming?”

Donut nods wordlessly and follows Wash down the street. They fall into an easy step alongside one another as Wash reaches down and grips Donut’s hand _tight._

“Easy, big guy. I’m not going anywhere.”

Wash nods. His hands trembles harder the closer they get to the house, and it’s a sweet thing, really. Red shutters and a dark green door. Donut absently wonders which upstairs window looks out from Wash’s old room, and then suddenly they are at the end of the sidewalk, the white wooden gate hanging open in front of them. Blue hydrangeas frame either side and Wash’s parents have noticed them, not yet.

“Annie, do we have bags?”

“In the garage, hon, you know that.”

“Well, _yeah_ , but—” Wash’s dad turns and sees them, squinting under the wide brim of his hat. “Can I help you boys? You lost?” He watches them, and the moment where he realizes who he is looking at occurs for Donut in slow motion.

“... _David._ ”

Wash lets go of Donut’s hand and pushes open the gate. “Hey, dad.”

“...Jesus _Christ._ Annie! Annie, come here!”

“Dad, it’s okay—”

“Annie!”

“Hank, _what_?” Wash’s mother comes from around the side of the house tugging off her gloves and pushing her hat back. “Hon—” She spots Wash and Donut and she _screams._

Wash flinches, but stays where he is. “Mom, it’s okay.” He moves closer, but his mother steps back, and Donut realizes what Wash meant, now.

_What if it makes things worse?_

“Mom, please—”

_I’m not the same._

Wash takes another step forward. “I know what they told you. I know what they said and I’m sorry. Please, you have to understand, I’m _so_ sorry.”

“Who—”

“Dad, it’s me. I swear it’s me, I just—”

“Annie, go inside.” Wash’s father moves in front of her, brandishing his garden shears. “I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but my son—”

“Dad, _stop._ ” Wash moves forward and disarms his father with practiced ease, tossing the shears away. “ _Look_ at me. Just...just look. I’m sorry I was gone, I’m sorry about whatever they told you, but I’m here. I’m _alive_ ,” he says. “And I’m here.”

The two men stare one another down until Wash’s mother moves between them. She looks up at her son and Donut wonders what she sees. He has no idea what Wash looked like the day he shipped out. He has no idea what Wash must look like in her memories, but it certainly can’t be what he is now.

But mothers and fathers...mothers and fathers _know._ And as soon as she reaches up and touches his face, Wash’s eyes close and he looks twenty-two again. He looks like a _boy_ again, and Donut has to look away.

“David,” she says. “ _David._ ”

Wash nods. “It’s me. I swear.”

Whatever comes after, Donut isn’t there for. He turns and leaves them, because while he is intimate with the concept, the _practice_ of resurrection — he hasn’t had opportunity to bear witness to it.

This is for them, he thinks.

He’ll come back later.

 

* * *

 

Wash knocks on the window, and Donut wakes with a start.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Donut opens the door and stumbles out, right into Wash’s arms. God, he looks like hell, but...he looks _happy._ “How’d it go?”

“It’s still going. They’re calling my sisters. I need you to come inside.”

“Oh, no, I don’t—”

Wash cups his cheek. Leans in and kisses him. “Don’t,” he says. “Just come inside and meet my family.”

 

* * *

 

In the days after, they make a lot of trips to Wash’s old house. To meet his sisters, to see where he was buried. There’s pain to be felt, truths to be told, some with more editing than others. Wash can’t seem to bring himself to tell them the worst of things, and Donut has forbid either of them from telling their families how the two of them met. They’d agreed on that after a particularly bitter fight one night when Donut just couldn’t _feel_ happy for either of them, when he’d wanted desperately to fling himself into the orbit of another planet, another station, and be _alone._

They’d met that night with fierceness, unable to make it to the bedroom, bodies pressed uncomfortably against the kitchen counter while Wash clutched at Donut’s arms and pleaded for him to just _make this stop._

“Make what stop? Wash—”

“I don’t know, _I don’t know_ —”

“I love you, I forgive you.”

“You shouldn’t have. We shouldn’t have done what we did, why did we ever—”

“I forgive you. I let it go.”

_I forgive you._

_I let it go._

 

* * *

 

When the seasons change, Donut is more aware that time is passing.

In the throes of summer, he can’t always tell, but the harvesting and growing of different things makes for a calendar all on its own.

And Wash. Wash is kind of a calendar.

He changes with the seasons, and Donut realizes about himself that he does, too. Some of their features seem to wax and wane, and what started as a quiet love and a place of possibilities is suddenly a very _great_ love, and they —

They are _thriving._

Things still hurt, sometimes. There are old wounds that will always ache — Donut’s scars can tell when the rain is coming in, Wash’s old implants eventually need to be removed.

There are sleepless nights and there are nights when they rest like dead men. There are days that go on forever, and there are days when they are so happy Donut can’t seem to keep track of the minutes.

Their house gets bigger. It gets fuller, from time to time. Families come and families go. Donut’s mother, Wash’s mother — they meet and become friends. Two years after they first came home, they host their old friends, old _family._ Caboose comes from the moon and stays for a few weeks. Tucker and Junior show up, Grif and Simmons and Kai, too. Sarge, eventually, agrees, and winds up staying longer than anyone.

Donut wonders if he’d consider staying for good. He’ll have to bring it up next time.

Leaves change and trees grow. The sunflowers they plant sprout up a little later than they should each and every year, and that is a better metaphor than Donut could ever make on his own.

At night, they the answer to the most important question of their lives —

_Can I forgive? Can I move past this? Can I move on?_

What happened, they don’t talk much about. Donut has the scars to prove one half, Wash the other. But they are aware of what they used to be, and even more aware of what they’ve become.

Three years after they came home, Wash rolls over and asks, “Should we paint the house?”

“If you want.”

“I was thinking green. Just something different.”

Donut laughs. “Sure,” he says. “Whatever makes you happy.”

Wash looks at him and grins. “A green house would make me very happy.”

“Then you can have it. Whatever makes you happy, it’s yours.”

Wash rolls onto his back again and laughs. “Well. Lucky for me, I’ve already got you.”

He is asleep before Donut has time to react.

He is asleep before Donut has time to say —

_You make me happy, too._


End file.
